Since icyveins and elitistjerks have already been recommended as sites, I'll recommend another addon. OmniCC. It's a very simple addon but I find it really useful. When you use an ability a number will show up on the icon, letting you know when you can use that ability again. When there's only a few seconds left it will count down in red so it's easy to spot when you can press it again. You can also use the site askmrrobot.com, it helps you find new upgrades and lets you know how to gem and reforge your gear for 100% optimization.

thank you! I actually cant find where to add your tag....where is the social tab?

and thank you all for your advice. I tend to take video games i like very seriously, and WoW might soon be listed as my favorite. I love large and involving games with a touch of complexity. This is mainly why i left consoles, they just dont offer enough content and challenge and progression to satisfy me. WoW on the other hand is a game ive heard many people say they played hardcore for years. The draw for me regarding that is extreme.

Standard keybind is "o", then down in the left corner is an "Add friend" button
And if you rebound the "o" key, the icon to enter the social tab is in the top left corner of your chat window

just level up first, you'll get to know your class etc. you don't really have to worry about dps or stuff untill you reach 90. if you do want to learn more about the class, vists the class forum or search for other sites like icy-veins, askmrrobot. these can help you quite alot

If you're truly interested in skill and competition there are two aspects of the game you can consider for your long term future: bleeding edge progression PvE, and high end PvP.

If you decide to go the PvE route you'll need to do a lot of work. Gear is a big, big factor and you won't be recruited to a high end raiding guild if you don't have gear to match the content they are on. The world's top guilds clear content within a few weeks of release by raiding 12, 14, even 16 hours a day. Hundreds of wipes with little room for failure. Once the content is clear they farm it, gear up, and many will sell boosts and carries to people for gold or real life cash. If you want to go this route you're probably going to need to progress up through various guilds of different skill levels. A good idea might be to use the next 6-12 months in MoP getting some experience, levelling different characters, clearing out all the content from the previous expansions etc. when the next expansion pack is released and everyone needs to level up, the gear is essentially reset, a perfect time to take the step up into hardcore raiding of it interests you; your WoW experience may be a little lower but your gaming experience should make up for it.

Personally, I think the best gauge of skill is PvP (this is often debated on these forums). The good thing about PvP is that gear matters slightly less; it still matters, but not nearly as much as PvE. The gear is also much more obtainable, low quality armour can be crafted, medium quality armour can be bought by farmed honour points, and the high end stuff is purchasable by conquest points which are limited by a weekly cap depending on your arena or rated battleground rating. The real time sink in PvP comes from knowing other classes. Arena and RBG require a lot of tactical awareness and games are won and lost in your split second decision making, interrupting a heal, dodging a crowd control spell behind a pillar, shadow stepping your healer to eat a hunters trap etc. it's really useful in PvP to understand other class mechanics and you eventually gain an innate understanding of cool downs, overlapping spell effects, diminishing returns on stuns and fears etc. if you become a truly great PvPer you can make a healthy amount of money in tournaments, streaming, tutoring and boosting (although the latter is frowned on).

-in 5 man dungeons, Arms Warriors again are the weakest link in the chain as they require 3X amount of healing as other classes and therefore die much more frequently and receive less healing in general, as with the amount of mana spent to keep an Arms Warrior alive the healer can heal all other members and himself.

Questing: There's no more: "Where to exp at level X". The board in Stormwind (Alliance) or Orgrimar (Horde) will give you a quest which will lead you to an area suitable for your level. That being said, completely do each area. Even if you see the mobs green or some gray, keep at it, until you get the achievement for the zone. After you're done, return to the capital and pick the quest for the zone you like its name most.

Professions: I can't stress this enough. Many people prefer to ding to max level 1st and then get themselves busy with them. Don't do the same. Since you are new, pick 2 of any of the gathering professions (Skinning, Herbalism, Mining) and level them up while you're questing.

Roles and min/maxing: You won't be able to max your dps/dmg done in the environments provided in the LFD (looking for dungeon/grp) tool. They've been severely nerfed and are really easy. There will be the ocassional boss with a large healthpool which will allow you to lay down a rotation (you can find the basics for each class and spec on noxxic.com) Their only aim is to level you up fast. Try doing every dungeon at least once though.

Addons: I will generally agree with the "don't install addons". I will only tell you to get recount though to track your progress in dmg done while in dungeons.

PvP: Battlegrounds. The truth is that you wil get absolutely smashed by heirloom geared players (heirlooms are available to max level players and are gear that binds to account and thus can be passed around to low level alts. Heirlooms' stats scale with level). In that light, try to be as annoying and controlling as possible by chaining control. You will get literally one-shot though by many or be completely unable to break a priest's shield etc. Avoid direct combat, be as much of an annoyance to the enemy team as possible. Chain sapping with the rogue for instance. You need to learn that there's something called DR (diminishing returns) which is how CC(crowd control) works. The 1st time you apply a control effect it will last for its full duration. The second time for half of the original and the third time for half of the second. The fourth time, the target it immune to cc. There must be a pass of 15 seconds after the last appliance of a control effect for the target to be susceptible to the same control effect. That being said, there are many control types. Sap is not the same as stun (they do not share DR). Blind is different, polymorph is different etc.

Also, if you like it, do play Horde. I am alliance, but yeah: play horde.

There are a bunch of usefull addons. I highly recommend checking out curse.com for some.
Addons that are helpfull:
-MapCoords (if you use Wowhead or WoWDB, alot of people there will tell you where to go by coordinates.)
-Recount/Skada (it displays your current and your party/raid members DPS, total damage done, dispells, healing done, interrupts etc.)
-NPCScan or similar addon (Lets you know when there is a Rare mob around)
-Auctionator or similar addon (Very easy to use Auction House addon)
-TellMeWhen/NeedToKnow/etc (An addon that can track DoTs (Damage over Time), stacks, cooldowns etc)
-DeadlyBossMod/BigWigs (An addon that tells you stuff during boss fights. Like "Move, you are standing in bad stuff", "Beepboopattack in 4 seconds", "This will happen in 10 seconds" etc)

All of these addons will not alter your standard Blizzard UI. Mostly.

JSIE - JS' Interface Enhancements could replace a lot of these addons. It offers: - Automatically repairs when opening repair vendors (using guild or personal funds).
- Auto-Mount slash command to properly select ground/flying/water mounts at random or by selection.
- Adds spell ID to tooltips.
- Adds coordinates to world map showing cursor and current location with decimals.
- Adds coordinates to the minimap with option to only show on hover (disappears after 10 seconds)
- Adds hover-bind support for key binds.
- Removes gryphons from the standard user interface.
- Removes extra background art from the Blizzard Action Bar/Micro Bar/ Bags areas.
- Automatically sells junk in your inventory when you open a vendor.
- Make the Blizzard Interface Options frame movable.
- Displays your current durability when you die.
- Adds the Target Health Percentage number to the Blizzard Target Frame.

---------- Post added 2013-05-27 at 11:12 AM ----------

To OP:

Good luck with everything! I remember how awesome I thought WoW was when I first started in late "Wrath of the Lich King".
Enjoy!

Good luck trying to have fun in wow as a hardcore gamer. You are 5 years late, for that time game was dumbed down and its casual only atm. If you need answers at level 90, why everything is so easy, follow Greg Street on twitter, he will always have to right answer

Good luck trying to have fun in wow as a hardcore gamer. You are 5 years late, for that time game was dumbed down and its casual only atm. If you need answers at level 90, why everything is so easy, follow Greg Street on twitter, he will always have to right answer

If you don't have any real life friends playing on your server, try to get some ingame ones, makes the game much more fun. If you want to achieve everything be prepared to slay thousands of thousands low lvl mobs just to call yourself "the Insane"!